How can I make a solution in visual studio so that the .dll dependencies that reside in some other directory totally different from where the solution itself is affected by "get latest".
What I've tried is creating a Dependencies solution folder within the solution itself and added the dlls to it, that way they belong to the solution even though they don't belong to the directory structure of the solution.
So for example the .sln file is in:
D:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionA\solution.sln
and the dlls are in:
d:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionX\Dependencies\Binaries
What I really want to achieve is to have a foolproof way to build the solution, including the following scenario:
1- Have a brand new installation of windows, visual studio, etc.
2- open visual studio
3- find solution.sln on TFS, double click on it so that visual studio gets every project and files in the solution, and opens the solution
4- successfully build
What happens when I try the Dependencies solution folder approach and repeat the scenario above, it will get all the projects within the solution, opens it, but the dependencies solution contents won't be pulled from TFS (although Visual Studio shows them on Solution explorer), which I think is flawed.
Some suggestions that don't involve creating pre/post build scripts are appreciated.
When you attempt to open a solution for the first time using the TFS Source Control Explorer, you may find that not all of your dependencies will be retrieved - the squiggly line may be highlighting some of your missing References.
One work around is to...
SOLUTION SETUP
Checkout all of your source code from TFS (i.e. Main and all of the sub-directories)
Open your solution in Visual Studio (i.e. MyApplication.sln)
In the solution explorer, create a New Solution Folder called ThirdPartyDll, and then add the appropriate assembly references (i.e. Assembly1.dll, Assembly2.dll,...)
Check-in your solution to TFS
SAMPLE FILE STRUCTURE
Main
MyApplication.sln
Source
MyProjectA
MyProjectA.csproj
MyProjectB
MyProjectB.csproj
Dependencies
Assembly1.dll
Assembly2.dll
You've run into a limitation of the "Open from Source Control" functionality. If you added the solution to source control from Visual Studio you should have seen the following message:
"The project that you are attempting to add to source control may cause other source control users to have difficulty opening this solution or getting newer versions of it. To avoid this problem, add the project from a location below the binding root of the other source controlled projects in the solution."
Open from Source Control will create a workspace mapping for the solutions root directory (D:\tfs\repository\main\SolutionA) but not a separate one for the SolutionX folder which is a peer to SolutionA. On the "new" machine you will need to manually create a workspace mapping to d:\tfs\repository\main in order to get both the SolutionA and SolutionX folder.
Create a solution folder and add the dependencies to it, that way when VS gets latest for the solution it will download these files. A bit brittle as people will need to maintain that folder but it works.
Alternatively create a nuget package and use restore packages on build. It will require a couple of extra steps when you create a new developer box (your nuget package repo will need to be added) but it will work for all projects going forward and is less brittle than the solution folder method.
I can open my project by double clicking on the .csproj file. It opens fine and it doesn’t generate a .sln. If I copy the same project to a virtual machine and do the same it opens but creates a .sln file.
I really don’t need a solution I would prefer to only work on a single project.
Am I missing something here?
Visual Studio always creates a solution. If it cannot find one in the same folder as the .csproj file then it will create one itself, based on what it can reverse-engineer from the project file content.
The solution is hidden by default if the solution only contains one project. Fixing this is recommended: Tools + Options, Projects and Solutions, General, "Always show solution" checkbox.
There is always a solution, even if you don't see it. There's a setting that determines whether the solution is visible when there is only one project.
After some use Visual Studio 2008 when opening a solution that is checked into Visual Studio Team Foundation will pop up a dialog saying:
Projects have recently been added to this solution. Do you want to get them from source control?
This happens every time the solution is loaded (even if no projects have been added). The only way I have found to remove this minor annoyance is to completely rebuild the SLN file.
Has anyone found a better/simpler way?
I had this recently after we moved a number of projects in the solution. I worked out eventually, that each project actual appears in solution file multiple times each with path information! So even though the path in the main reference of the project was correct it was wrong further down the file.
So go through the .sln file and make sure the paths in all the references of each project is correct.
For instance, the first reference for one of my projects is:
Project("{F184B08F-C81C-45F6-A57F-5ABD9991F28F}") = "ObexPushVB", "Samples\ObjectPush\ObexPushVB\ObexPushVB.vbproj", "{E3692A59-D636-48E8-9B57-7DA80A88E517}"
EndProject
In my case the path there was correctly updated. But then we have also for that project:
SccProjectUniqueName8 = Samples\\ObjectPush\\ObexPushVB\\ObexPushVB.vbproj
SccProjectTopLevelParentUniqueName8 = InTheHand.Net.Personal.sln
SccProjectName8 = Samples/ObjectPush/ObexPushVB
SccLocalPath8 = Samples\\ObjectPush\\ObexPushVB
So all of those paths needed to be updated too! After I fixed that manually all was well. (The sample there is after the fix BTW).
Hey, this actually happened to me about 4 years ago.
First, it sounds to me like someone on your team doesn't have all the updates applied to their visual studio installation. Go around and get everyone upgraded to the latest service pack for your VS version.
Once that is done, unbind the solution, fix the file, rebind it and tell everyone to do a force get latest on your TFS project.
See
http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/tfsversioncontrol/thread/c2822ef1-d5a9-4039-9d3e-498892ce70b6
http://www.nivisec.com/2008/09/vsts-projects-have-recently-been-added.html
(broken link: http://technorati.com/posts/Yadz3Mj1pxHPSJLlnUs1tL1sIwU5jXa5rNBbIAnYdvs%3D)
This message will also occur if your solution has a reference to a project whose location is outside of the solution directory, but it doesn't physically exist (i.e. you hadn't checked it out before opening the solution). VSS (or TFS) will then give you that message and clicking OK will automatically get latest on the project that's missing so your solution won't have any unloaded projects in it.
EDIT:
Reading that again confuses me. Basically you get the message if your solution has a source control binding to a project that isn't inside of the folder your solution is in, and that outside project doesn't physically exist on your machine. Clicking on OK will check the project out for you.
In my case it was a reference to a test project which has been deleted.
I noticed that when I inspected all the projects in the Solution Explorer. Our team uses solution folders so it was not normally visible and because it was a test project it didn't have any impact on the application.
After removing the project from the solution the messages is no longer shown.
I'm working with Visual Studio 2013.
For me, it happened after having modified the folder's structure of my solution (I added a sub-folder for a project directly on the source code explorer). I got rid of this boring error by removing all the projects from my solution, using the solution explorer. After that, I closed Visual Studio, manually edited the .sln file and removed the whole section :
GlobalSection(TeamFoundationVersionControl) = preSolution
To finish, I just added the projects back to the solution as "Existing projects" with solution explorer. Visual Studio will recreate by itself the removed section of the .sln file.
The same error message can occur if someone adds a project, check-in edited solution file, but don't adds project directory to source control.
To cut a long story short - this error can mean that in .sln file there's reference to .csproj file, but the .csproj itself is physically missing.
In my case I renamed a(n) (unloaded) project in VS. It correctly moved the project to a new folder and no data was lost. However the solution file still pointed to the old directory which still existed but was empty (so the project could not be actually loaded).
After deleting the project from the solution (which was no problem because the folder was allready empty) the problem was solved.
Adding the project again from the new location was no problem either.
I had this problem after moving a number of unit test projects that were under source control (VSTS) into another folder. After this whenever I opened a branch I would get the "Projects have recently been added to this solution. Do you want to get them from source control?" error.
For some reason the csproj file from the trunk wasn't under source control which meant it was missing from the branched version. I find this happens sometimes after moving source controlled projects.
To fix it I opened the original source trunk, used Source Control Explorer to add the missing file(s), then merged the trunk to the branches to copy over the missing csproj file.
After this I could open the branched versions without the warning popping up.
I am working in a Web Project in Visual Studio 2008. When I hit F12 (or right-click and select Go To Definition) Visual Studio is consistently going to the Metadata file instead of going to the source.
Some Points:
All the source code is C#, there is no VB.Net
All the projects are in the same solution
Everything is a project reference as opposed to a file reference (checked and double-checked)
I have tried the Clean/Rebuild Solution approach (even to the point of clearing out the Temp directory, Temporary ASP.NET Files directory, etc).
Has anyone else seen this behavior and/or know how to fix it?
Well, another developer found the answer. The specific project we had an issue with was originally added as a file reference, then removed and added as a Project Reference. Visual Studio however, kept both in the csproj file for the web site, causing the issue. He went in and manually edited the csproj file to remove the file reference to the problem project and all is fixed now
It happens when you don't add reference as a project but point to a dll or exe using Browse tab in Add Reference dialog. If you add reference using Projects tab you should go directly to the source code when you select Go To Definition.
However, if you install ReSharper, you'll go to source code even if you added your reference to a dll/exe using Browse tab.
Looks like it needs to be setup in Resharper as well. My Visual Studio does not navigate to .NET Framework source code until I enable it in Resharper.
1. close your solution.
2. delete hidden <name of the solution>.suo file in folder where your solution's <name of the solution>.sln file exists.
3. open your solution.
4. rebuild your solution.
For those using VS 2017 (I'm at version 15.3.4 at this moment) here are the simple steps:
Open your solution in Windows Explorer and close down Visual Studio
In the explorer menu, select View and ensure that the "Hidden items" checkbox is marked
Navigate to the subfolder .vs\[your solution name]\v15
Delete the .suo file
Restart VS and build your solution
That fixed it for me: F12 opened the actual source file, not the "from metadata" version.
Visual studio often suffer from a problem of going to metadata rather than your project if you shift location where you are building the project, ie you may have several versions to test things out.
Simply delete the reference and immediately add it back and everything will be sorted out.
The marked solution does not always work. You must make sure that the referenced project GUID in the project files is the correct GUID for the project you are trying to reference. Visual Studio does allow them to get out of synch in some circumstances. You can get the project GUID from the project file with a text editor.
So if project A reference project B. Open up project B.csproj in text editor, copy out project GUID from the tag. Then open up project A.csproj in text editor, and make sure that you are using the correct GUID. Search for project name "B" in this case. It should be at . Replace the GUID in the tag with the correct one. Save and reload.
Of course also make sure file based references to your projects are removed. You only want project references.
I've kill all VS instances, deleted the SUO, launch sln and it worked for me...
Remove the reference dll, Build (will get errors), ADD THE reference (you removed) then build again ... F12 on your function should then work (worked for me).
#1
Check "View - Object Browser" and if you see more than one assembly with the same name - that's why your getting this error.
For us it was a bug in VS 2019:
If you have ASP.NET "Razor helpers" in App_Code folder the Visual Studio 2019 interprets that as a different assembly but with the same name, that hides the actual assembly.
There's no fix for that other than rewrite those helpers to partial views or HTML helpers (you will have to do that anyway if you plan migrating to .NET Core).
See this workaround on MS's site and please upvote the bug there so MS fixes it
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/solutions/1008795/view.html (please upvote)
#2
Another reason why same assembly can be loaded twice in the object browser is if you have a unit-test project that starts iis-express process and never kills it properly.
I figured out how to solve my problem from this post, maybe it will also work for some of you.
I followed these steps:
Close the solution.
Delete the intellisense database file for the solution: .ncb
Open the solution.
Rebuild the solution.
(I believe either step 3 or 4 regenerates the intellisense database file when it is missing)
Intellisense, "go to defintion" and "find all references" should be working again.
In my case, (using Visual Studio Professional 2015), when I had disabled the XAML designer, the F12 stopped working.
As soon as I revert the changes, and restart Visual Studio, the F12 worked again.
Checked the pattern multiple times to confirm and then posted. Hope it helps someone.
Symptom:
Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate was repeatedly failing to find references to functions, #defines, includes, etc when using the "Go To Definition" or "Go To Declaration" or "Find All References" features - oddly Intellisense was working.
Fix:
Close Visual Studio
Delete (rename if you want to be conservative) the solution .sdf file
Reopen Visual Studio
The .sdf file will automatically be rebuilt by parsing the include files in your solution
For me, the GUID solution didn't work and I couldn't find my .ncb file. (Or maybe I'm lazy and didn't look hard enough, but that's not important.) Rebuilding and restarting visual studio didn't help either.
What I did was close visual studio and delete the .dll and .pdb being referenced in the top of the Meta Data file that my intellisense kept linking to. In my case it meant I deleted my .dll and it's .pdb file from Utilities/bin/Release. (Utilities is the name of the .dll project I was having issues with.) Then I restarted visual studio and rebuilt the .dll then the whole solution. No more problems!
Just found another cause. I upgraded my web project to 4.0 but left the class libraries at 2.0. At that point all the class libraries in my solution were treated as file references from my web project. Might help someone else...
I faced the same issue and one of colleagues gave me the following solution and it worked!
If none of the above works for you,
Remove all the references and add them back (make sure the path is
correct)
Go to Solution properties, and recheck the Project
Dependencies of all projects. Make sure the project that you'll be
using is added as a dependent in the project that you are working
on.
I did all suggested steps but nothing has been changed then
finally
right click and add reference menu, project tab
simply unselected the reference project.
save the solution.
select the same project.
Rebuild the solution.
Problem sorted. Hope this will help to some one.
Below steps worked for me.
Go to .csproj file
Open it in Notepad Go to line where dll is referred.<Reference Include="">
Delete the line
<SpecificVersion>False</SpecificVersion>
or
<SpecificVersion>True</SpecificVersion>
After deleting dll files from Visual Studio first and adding them back manually from Solution Explorer --> Website --> Add --> Reference and enabling 32-bit Applications in IIS fixed it for me.
VS2017 VB.Net Windows 10 Pro - I use an assembly names "SharedCollection" which includes a VB Module named MyGlobals. One of the globals is a FileVersion. References showed metadata and the Windows Service that referenced it had an outdated setting. I had tried some of the SUO remedies above and none of them worked.
This Worked
I deleted and recreated the project reference for ShareCollection in References.
click on web site menu from VS.
Add reference...
Click on project tab from dialog box
Select ddl
Click on ok button
In my case, I had just recently changed
<mvcBuildViews>
to "true" in my site's .csproj file (to find compile errors in my Razor view files: http://forums.asp.net/t/1909113.aspx?How+to+have+Visual+Studio+2012+returned+compile+errors+on+razor+syntax+error+in+asp+net+web+page+2+ ), and when I then built I was getting errors from my within my site's /obj/Debug/ directory. From any of those files (which were out-of-date), right-clicking and selecting "Go To Definition" would give me the [metadata] version.
So for me, none of the solutions here worked, because I wasn't starting from a file that was actually in my project. Deleted that entire /obj/Debug/ directory, the errors went away, and from any normal file I can correctly use Go To Definition.
I just ran into this problem on VS 2013. Something I could (did?) not isolate was changing the GUID in the CSPROJ file. Since the CSPROJ files are checked into SVN, I could not simply change the GUID on my local dev. Instead, I was constantly SVN reverting the local change each time it happened.
First, I had to solve the changing GUID problem.
Revert the CSPROJ to the checked-in version.
Open the CSPROJ via a text editor, NOT VS.
Extract value from the pristine CSPROJ file.
{B1234567-5123-4AAE-FE43-8465767788ED}
Open the SLN file via a text editor, NOT VS.
Locate the Project reference in the solution.
Project("{FAE12345-3210-1357-B3EB-00CA4F396F7C}") = "Some.Project", "....\assemblies\Some.Project\Some.Project.csproj", "{B7654321-5321-4AAE-FE3D-ED20900088ED}"
EndProject
The first GUID listed is the Solution GUID. For every project referenced in your SLN, you should see this value repeated at the first argument. The GUID following the .csproj is the one you want to replace with the pristine GUID.
This should solve the first problem, but the "Go to Definition" landing in meta data is not solved. In our SLN file, there is a master project (our web site), so its entry in the SLN file should contain a ProjectSection entry with multiple GUID values. Here is an example:
ProjectSection(ProjectDependencies) = postProject
{AC50D230-24C4-4DCA-BAAD-355E6AF5EFBD} = {AC50D230-24C4-4DCA-BAAD-355E6AF5EFBD}
EndProjectSection
Notice the missing GUID in this collection is the one from my pristine project.
Add the missing GUID as the last entry between ProjectSection and EndProjectSection. The format appears to be per-line, and it is {GUID} = {GUID}.
Save the file.
Open your solution.
Right-click a reference in the newly-added project and "Go to Definition."
I had a circular reference between the two projects involved (which is a no-no). Had to restructure my code a bit in order to solve it as both projects were truly dependant on each other. Removing one of the references solved the intellisense problem. It was logically flawed and I probably wouldn't have noticed without this error!
This one worked for me:
Right click the dll in the reference folder in your solution
explorer
Remove dll file
Right click the Reference folder, then
Add reference to the dll file again
This can happen if you're trying to jump to the definition in a project that has been unloaded (Unavailable). Right-click the unloaded project and select "Reload Project".
I modified the .csproj file and in the Reference -> HinPath changed obj to bin and it solved the problem.
I had a variation of this issue, where when I loaded my solution my referencing project had errors until I compiled the project it was referencing. At that point the errors disappeared but F12 took me to metadata.
The issue was a dependency in the project being referenced that conflicted with a dependency in the referencing project. I manually removed dependencies from the project being referenced until one of them resolved the errors in the referencing project. After that I was able to F12 to the actual code, and the project would load without errors.
If anyone knows exactly why this happens I'm interested to know in the comments.
This little trick solved it for me - unload the referencing project from the solution and then just reload it
Best guess is that you don't have debug information. Maybe you have multiple copies of your assembly on disk and it doesn't have the .pdb file with it.
Do a search for your assembly names from your projects and delete them all and rebuild.